Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming, (Mr. Barrasso).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin) and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin) and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the farm bills that we take up every few years are essential pieces of legislation. They help provide the tools and resources that farmers and ranchers need to carry out their task of feeding our Nation. And with parts of the 2018 farm bill expiring in the next few months, passing our next farm bill needs to be one of Congress's top priorities during the remainder of the year.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has been working on this year's legislation, but there is more work to be done. And we need to make sure that we don't delay in getting this bill over the finish line. Farmers and ranchers already face a lot of uncertainty in their profession--few jobs are as subject to market fluctuations or the whims of the weather--and the least that we can do here in Congress is make sure they know that the critical programs won't be expiring and they will continue to have access to essential resources that help make farming and ranching possible.

As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee and a Senator from a State where agriculture is not just ``a'' way of life but ``the'' way of life, the farm bill is always one of my top priorities.

I have had the privilege of helping to craft four farm bills during my time in Congress; and, for me, the process always begins and ends with farmers and ranchers.

I have been gearing up for the 2023 farm bill pretty much since work finished on the last one. And, last year, I kicked off a series of roundtables with agriculture producers to hear firsthand from farmers and ranchers what they need from this year's farm bill.

These formal discussions, along with the many informal conversations I regularly have with farmers and ranchers, have provided me with invaluable feedback, and I am working on a number of measures for this year's farm bill that reflect the input I have received from South Dakota producers.

One thing that farmers have made clear is the critical role of the farm safety net. Crop insurance is the cornerstone of the farm safety net, and it needs to be maintained and, to the extent possible, strengthened in the next farm bill.

Currently, the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs, which help offset losses when prices for agricultural commodities drop, are not always proving sufficient. And one of my top priorities for this year's bill is improving commodity and livestock programs to ensure that farmers and ranchers have sufficient backup.

I am also working to make the Conservation Reserve Program a more effective option for producers and landowners. Currently, the program doesn't

sufficiently support grazing infrastructure, which limits the benefit of participating for some producers.

And the annual payment limit for this program hasn't changed since it was first created in 1985. To address these issues, I introduced the Conservation Reserve Program Improvement Act, which will provide more flexibility for producers and increase the payment cap to account for increased land values. And I will work to ensure that the CRP Improvement Act is included in the final farm bill.

In addition to farmed crops, livestock production is an integral part of South Dakota's agricultural economy. And one of my top priorities for this year's farm bill is addressing some of the challenges facing South Dakota livestock producers in getting their products to Americans' tables.

The last few years have revealed some vulnerabilities in our food supply chain that had an outsized impact on agricultural and livestock producers.

Early pandemic closures, for example, of some meat processing plants led to bottlenecks in processing livestock and delays for a lot of ranchers, and this led to supply shortages and empty cases at the grocery store. Shortages caused by lack of processing capacity, not a lack of livestock. It has become clear that livestock producers need more processing options, and one way we can reduce dependence on the big packers is by expanding smaller meatpackers' capacity.

I have introduced the Strengthening Local Processing Act to help smaller processors invest in the infrastructure they need to expand. My bill would also allow more State-inspected meat products to be sold across State lines, which would open up new markets for small meat processors and the farmers and ranchers who supply them. I have also introduced legislation--the bipartisan American Beef Labeling Act--to require the U.S. Trade representative to develop a World Trade Organization-compliant means of reinstating mandatory country of origin labeling for beef.

Under our current system, beef that is neither born nor raised in the United States but is simply finished here can be labeled ``product of the United States,'' even if the only American thing about the beef is the plastic that it is wrapped in, if that.

That is unfair to American cattle producers and misleading to consumers, and I am pleased that USDA is working on a proposed rule to close the ``product of the U.S.A.'' labeling loophole.

And I will continue to work to get my American Beef Labeling Act included in the 2023 farm bill so that consumers can be confident that any beef labeled ``product of the U.S.A.'' really came from American cattle producers.

New practices and technologies can be game-changers for farmers, and without reliable data, it can be unclear whether these practices and technologies will have positive impact. And that is why, earlier this year, I introduced the Agriculture Innovation Act, which would make it easier for producers and trusted researchers to use USDA data to assess the impact of various production practices, so that producers can gauge whether these practices are right for their farm or ranch operation.

And, of course, while the macrolevel data USDA collects can provide valuable information, farmers are already beginning to look to the next frontier, collecting realtime, microlevel data from their own fields.

And I have introduced the Promoting Precision Agriculture Act to help advance precision agriculture technology and to allow more farmers to take advantage of this data revolution. And because without a reliable internet connection, precision agriculture technology doesn't get very far, I am also working to ensure that my bill to streamline USDA's broadband authorities and ensure that funding goes to areas where at least 90 percent of households lack broadband access is included in this year's farm bill.

Producing the food that fills Americans' dinner tables is no easy task, and we owe the men and women who do this important work the certainty that the programs they depend on will be there for them. I hope that leaders in both houses of Congress will put passing the 2023 farm bill at the very top of our to-do list.

And I will do everything I can to advance this important legislation. And today and every day, I will continue to make farmers and ranchers my priority.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance) would have voted ``nay,'' and the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance) would have voted ``nay,'' and the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley) would have voted ``nay.''

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, summer has arrived, which means Congress is turning its attention to appropriations bills for the coming year, and my hope is that this year Congress will consider all 12 appropriations bills under regular order.

Now, what do I mean by regular order? Regular order refers to allowing bills to go through the committee process--including hearings and a markup, where members of the committee have a chance to amend and improve the bill--and then a referral by the committee to the Senate as a whole.

Bills are then considered on the Senate floor. Some bills pass the Senate by unanimous consent, while others undergo a full debate, including amendment votes, before being voted on by the Senate as a whole.

Then, if necessary, the bill goes to a conference committee or is passed back and forth between the House and the Senate to reconcile any differences between the House and Senate bills before the amended versions are then put to the full House and Senate.

That is what is considered the ``regular order'' process, and it is generally the best way to make laws. Regular order allows for a truly deliberative process. It provides the time to fully consider all aspects of legislation and to hear input from a broad array of Members. It promotes collaboration, compromise, and a sense of ownership of the final legislation, which makes bills more likely to pass. And, it is a transparent process, one that ensures that both Senators and the American people can see how the legislation in question is made and have ample time to digest it--not to mention the key fact that, by ensuring the input of more Senators, regular order helps ensure that a broader swath of the American people is represented in any final legislation.

Regular order is something that I think most Members generally aspire to. But the actual use of regular order has all too frequently been in short supply around here in recent years.

Too often, major legislation has been written behind closed doors and dropped on Members at the last minute--bypassing the chairmen, ranking members, and Senators who sit on the committees of jurisdiction and would otherwise have the opportunity to consider and amend the legislation in committee, before being brought up for a floor vote with little or no opportunity to offer amendments.

Fifty years ago, most bills were going through regular order. In fact, 83 percent of the legislation considered on the Senate floor during the 1970s was a product of the committee process. But by the 2010s, those numbers had dropped sharply, along with the number of Senate floor votes on amendments.

But, of course, even while the use of regular order has decreased, some legislation does still go through the regular order process. And I can personally attest to the fact that the use of regular order can bring major bipartisan successes.

During my time as chairman of the Commerce Committee, I focused on promoting collaboration and ensuring that bills in our committee's jurisdiction went through the regular order process, and we accomplished a lot: the first reauthorization of the Federal Communications Commission in more than a quarter century, the first reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Board in its 20-year history, multiple bills to advance the development and adoption of 5G, the longest surface transportation reauthorization since 1998, the longest reauthorization of the FAA since 1982, the first law to hold websites accountable for facilitating sex trafficking, and lots more. The vast majority of the bills that I just named ended up passing the Senate by strong bipartisan margins. And, of course, those are just examples of what was then our committee's jurisdiction.

There are plenty of others. For example, Democrats are more often associated with imposing burdensome government regulations than with lifting them. But Senator Crapo's 2018 bill easing the regulatory burden for community banks and credit unions went through the regular order process, and, ultimately, 17 Senate Democrats joined Republicans to support the bill.

In 2015, the HELP Committee passed one of the largest rewrites of our Nation's K-12 laws, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which returned more power to States when it comes to how kids are educated, by holding numerous hearings and multiple days of markups and considering dozens of amendments. In the end, that law passed with 85 votes in the U.S. Senate.

The 2018 farm bill, which reauthorized important safety net programs for farmers and ranchers, passed the Senate with 87 votes, following robust consideration by the Agriculture Committee, amendment votes on the Senate floor, and a conference committee.

And the list goes on. Regular order promotes collaborative, bipartisan, and successful results. As I indicated, regular order has been in somewhat short supply in the Senate in recent years. But I am encouraged by the fact that there seems to be a growing desire to return to regular order and that the Democrat chair and Republican vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee have expressed a shared commitment to considering all 12 appropriations bills this year through the regular order process.

But there are concerning signs too. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee recently held its first partisan markup since the Affordable Care Act in 2009. That defeats the whole idea of a committee process that can yield a bipartisan result on the Senate floor, and it suggests the Democrats are still too entrenched in the partisan far-left mindset that saw them force legislation like the so- called American Rescue Plan Act through Congress. That was the bill that helped plunge our Nation into its current inflation crisis.

And perhaps even more concerning, recently, the majority leader, when referring to his plans on artificial intelligence, actually claimed that Congress will need ``to invent a new process to develop the right policies to implement our framework'' because the committee process ``won't suffice.''

I wonder how his committee chairs feel about that, and I would venture to suggest that the committee process has worked pretty well to develop all sorts of important legislation and to get buy-in from Senators.

As we continue with the appropriations process, I hope that the determination expressed by the Democrat chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to pass all 12 appropriations bills through regular order will prevail, and I hope that this same attitude will be applied to other legislation that the Senate must consider this year-- like the National Defense Authorization Act, the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, the farm bill, and more.

If we want to get anything done in divided government, we are going to have to compromise, and the regular order process promotes the kind of bipartisan, collaborative action that will allow us to accomplish real things for the American people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the Supreme Court finished up its term recently by releasing several decisions that did not result in the Democrats' preferred outcomes. The hysteria was instant and, unfortunately, predictable.

``Disappointing and cruel,'' the Senate Democratic leader chastised one decision.

``Unacceptable and indefensible'' said another Democratic Senator.

``Horrifying'' was another response from a Democratic Senator.

Then there was the President of the United States who said:

This is not a normal court.

Not a normal court--never mind the fact that this Court, like others before it, is composed of nine Justices duly nominated and confirmed in accordance with the Constitution, sitting and interpreting the law. Apparently, the fact that this Court has issued decisions Democrats disagree with makes this ``not a normal court.''

Well, here is the list of thoroughly unradical decisions that have so horrified members of the Democratic party: The Court ruled that universities cannot make admissions decisions based upon the color of someone's skin. The Court ruled that the President does not have the right to create a massive student loan forgiveness program without clear authority from Congress. The Court ruled that the First Amendment does actually protect Americans from being forced by the Government to speak messages with which they disagree.

These are the rulings that Members of the Democratic party consider ``cruel and indefensible.''

Continuing with the theme of Democratic hysteria, the Democratic leader said on Sunday that the Supreme Court had achieved ``dangerous'' and ``regressive'' policies ``completely at odds with what the vast majority of Americans want.''

Now, I am not sure he has that quite right. I know the recent decisions are at odds with what the Democratic party wants, but the vast majority of Americans do not seem to be at odds with the Court's decisions. Take the Court's decision in favor of the First Amendment. It turns out that more Americans support that decision than oppose it. The same goes for the Court's student loan decision.

Public opinion is decidedly in favor of the Court's decision ruling that the Constitution does not allow universities to make admissions decisions on the basis of race. One poll found that 52 percent of the American people approve--approve--of the Court's decision, while just 32 percent disapprove. Another poll found that 59 percent of Americans approve of the Court's decision, while just 27 percent disapprove.

It seems that the Court is a lot more in line with Americans than the Democratic party would like to think.

Let me offer a few more statistics about this supposedly abnormal court.

Let's put things in context here for just a moment.

Nearly half of the cases decided by the Supreme Court in this term were decided unanimously--almost half. That means that all of those ``extreme'' Republican-nominated Justices and all of the Court's Democrat-nominated Justices were in unanimous agreement almost half the time.

That is not all. At least one of the Court's so-called liberal Justices was in the majority in more than 80 percent of cases. That means that more than 80 percent of the time, at least one liberal Justice agreed with the Court's conservatives. It kind of makes the Supreme Court seem not very extreme. Eighty percent of the decisions had Justices from so-called both sides--conservative and liberal sides.

Yes, there have been a handful of decisions where all of the liberal Justices have disagreed with the majority opinion. But that is hardly unprecedented. There have been plenty of cases in previous years where most or all of the so-called conservative Justices have disagreed with the majority opinion, and I don't remember Democrats having any problems with the legitimacy of those outcomes.

Democrats' utter hysteria in the face of some pretty mainstream Supreme Court decisions could almost be amusing, but it is not, because Democrats' rhetoric and proposed response to a Supreme Court that issues decisions they disagree with has crossed a line.

Now, I completely respect Democrats' right to be upset at and disagree with Supreme Court decisions. I disagreed with quite a few myself. But there is disagreement, and then there is attempting to undermine a branch of our government. And Democrats are engaged in the latter.

Over and over, Democrats' responses go beyond disagreement or outrage at the Court's decisions and cross the line into attacking the Court's legitimacy.

A number of Democrats have gone even further, directly or indirectly calling for expanding the Court or otherwise altering it to create a Court that will rule in line with where Democrats think it should be.

It is difficult to overstate just how dangerous Democrats' rhetoric is. Democrats are not only fostering a sense of distrust about a Court that is completely legitimate in every way--save for the fact the Democrats don't like some of its decisions--that they are proposing so- called solutions that would permanently and completely destroy faith in the Supreme Court as an impartial interpreter of the law.

Do Democrats seriously imagine that their proposal to ``restore faith'' in the courts would do anything but further divide the American public and encourage one half of the population to regard the Court as an arm of the Democratic Party?

Do Democrats seriously think they could pack the Court with their preferred Justices and not set off a permanent battle in which the party in power adds or subtracts Justices to achieve what it decides is balance?

If Democrats have their way, we will be looking at a future in which the Supreme Court is nothing but an arm of the party in power in the other two branches, with the number of Justices constantly changing to achieve the governing party's preferred outcomes.

There are names for systems of government in which the party in power controls the outcome in the courts. They are names like ``dictatorship'' and ``despotism.'' Not getting your way at the Supreme Court is a pretty poor reason to undermine our system of government. But I am starting to wonder just how well Democrats understand our system of government, given their apparent belief that the outcome should always be in their favor. That is not the way it works in our democratic Republic.

In our system of government, you win sometimes and you lose sometimes. When you lose, you fight hard to gain ground and persuade others of the rightness of your position. You do not--you do not-- attempt to rig the system so the outcome will always be in your favor. Hopefully--hopefully--you do not set out to undermine faith in the system by suggesting that any outcome that you don't like is not just incorrect but illegitimate.

It is deeply disturbing that so many Democrats and Democratic leaders are participating in this campaign to attack the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. I hope--I truly hope--that cooler heads will prevail before they do permanent damage to our system of government.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Ricketts), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Ricketts), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Sullivan), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have noted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Ricketts), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have noted ``nay.''